The national waistline is expanding like the deficit. It isn?t all done with mirrors, either. I drove down to visit my mother in North Carolina a few weeks ago and was unpleasantly surprised at how much fatter I?d gotten by the time I got there.

True, I?d had potato chips for breakfast, not a widely recommended weight-loss tactic. But could one measly bag of chips account for such a noticeable weight gain?

After a good deal of Sherlock-Holmesian inference, deduction, and dog-that-didn?t-bark-in-the-night contemplation, I concluded it had to be the mirrors.

As it happens, my mother has acquired most of her mirrors as part of one package deal or another. The ones in the bathrooms came with the house, the big one in her bedroom matches the rest of the bedroom furniture, and so forth.

All the mirrors in my house, on the other hand, were purchased individually, by me. If you?d asked me at the time, I would?ve said I bought each one because I liked it one for its oak frame, another for its froufrou plasterwork, a third for its graceful oval shape and bargain price, etc.

I now suspect it?s the only explanation that makes sense that I also liked them for their inaccuracy. Like the perfect black dress, they made me look thinner. But once I?d hung them, I believed them. Mirrors don?t lie you hear it all the time.

Apparently mine do which may also explain why I look so alarmingly fat in the mirrors they have in department store dressing rooms. I?d always written it off to the harsh fluorescent lighting.

But don?t feel too superior just yet. The whole society has been doing pretty much the same thing for the past 50 or 60 years. Maybe not with mirrors, but in several other ways. Size inflation, for instance.

At a consignment shop near where my mom lives, I found a WAVES officer?s bridge coat that was the near double of one my college roommate?s mother had worn in World War II.

I wore it through most of college, and eventually outgrew it. I?d love to find another one. But this one was clearly too small. So I asked my mom, who wore a similar coat in the WWII Navy Nurse corps, to try it on, just to see. She could barely get it buttoned.

According to the tag, this coat came from the Naval Uniform Depot (in ?Brooklyn, 32, New York? the 32 is what they had before ZIP codes) and it was a size 14.

My mom wears a size eight. Do the math. This coat was made to fit a 1943 size 14; in 2004 it fits a size six. OK, it?s not a complete surprise that small sizes have gotten bigger in the last half-century. But that much bigger?

You find a similar discrepancy when you look at vintage dress patterns. A size 16 Simplicity dress pattern from the 1940s is made to fit a woman with a 34-inch bust.

The size 16 Simplicity patterns on sale at your local fabric store fit a woman with a 38-inch bust. And even so, that woman may be shocked to learn she?s meant to buy a size 16 dress pattern, since she probably wears a size 12 or 14 in ready-made clothes.

A size 16 from J. Crew, Ann Taylor or Banana Republic made to fit a 41 -inch bust would be way too big. Several other factors have colluded to shield us from the painful truth about our expanding national waistline.

Elastic waists. Lycra Spandex. The trend to casual dress, which has replaced clothes tailored to fit precisely suits, for instance with casual clothes with a more casual fit.

Once, your clothes told you that you were a ten petite or a 15 -32 or a 46 short portly. Now, much of what we wear tells us we?re an S, M, L or XL, with each letter size meant to cover two or three number sizes.

It simplifies life for retailers because they don?t have to keep so many sizes in inventory. It also means you can grow out of a 14 into a 16 or out of a 16 into a 17 without even noticing.

There?s also the fact that wearing larger sizes is no longer a tragic fate. It used to mean you were stuck with grandmotherly styles cut to fit like old slipcovers.

In the bad old days, plus sizes were made by grading patterns up from a size eight sample. But grading is tricky, because people don?t gain weight proportionally.

As Pam Saving says: ?Most people who wear extended sizes didn?t start out extended.? Once upon a time, they wore eights and tens and 12s; then they gained weight and outgrew them.

?They didn?t get taller, their arms didn?t get longer, their shoulder width didn?t increase as much as their bust or waist measurement did.?

It?s Saving?s job to see that the extended sizes at Lands? End fit the women they?re meant for, instead of some mathematically inflated size eight. So the samples are made to fit a size 18 fit model instead of a size eight, and sized up from there.

When Lands? End added extended sizes a couple of years ago, they?d been getting 200 requests a week from former customers who?d outgrown their ?regular? size range.

These women wanted the same khakis, jeans, pima polo shirts and cotton sweaters they?d always bought only in bigger sizes. And that?s what they got.

?We keep the same quality and style,? Saving says. Once upon a time, it was assumed that only a very few styles were appropriate for larger women.

In the 1960s, when pants first began to replace skirts on a large scale, it was widely believed that pants only looked good on thin women. Fat women were advised with lots of tsk-tsking to stick with dresses.

Now you can find pretty much anything minikilts, low-waist stretch flare jeans, leopard-print halter tops in sizes up to XXXL. They?re also less likely to be hidden away in some fat-girl ghetto either in a special catalogue for big sizes, as if to remind the customer than she can?t wear clothes made for normal people, or in a department store basement with giant steam pipes crisscrossing the ceiling, as if the store were embarrassed to sell them.

Many catalogues Delia?a, Spiegel, Eddie Bauer, GFLA, J.Jill, Lands? End, et al. sell the same styles from the same catalogues in sizes from XS or S to XXXL or 3X.

Even the nomenclature has lost most of its sting. Once upon a time, larger ladies had to wear ?Stylish Stout? sizes, and big little girls wore ?Chubbettes?.

?Plus sizes? were an improvement, but they still sounded big. ?Extended sizes,? the latest locution, sounds almost neutral. It?s all progress. Why persecute people for being fat?

Still, because they ?normalise? fatness, all these steps forward have served to make the expansion of the national waistline that much less noticeable.

And unfortunately, as I learned from my mother?s mirrors, just because you don?t notice something doesn?t mean it isn?t there. Mirrors may lie, but lasers don?t. The results of a recent survey of body shape and size reveal that we?re a bigger nation than ever before. And, as we supersize ourselves, we?re outgrowing our clothes, our automobiles, our airline seats, even our coffins.

Write to Patricia McLaughlin c/o Universal Press Syndicate, 4520 Main St., Kansas City, Mo 64111 or patsy.mcverizon.net.